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The International Monetary Fund and its shareholders are working at cross-purposes with their own stated climate commitments and goals by driving fossil fuel dependency in countries around the world through the institution’s lending, surveillance and capacity building activities. According to a technical brief released today from Friends of the Earth, Gender Action, Urgewald, Recourse, and Oil Change International, the IMF must stop undermining countries’ just transition away from fossil fuels in order to align with its own climate goals and shareholders’ climate agendas.

• 57 international companies involved in 48 joint ventures with Russian oil and gas companies in 21 countries 
• 14 of these joint ventures are producing oil and gas within Russia 
• Since 2019, the Russian fossil fuel industry received close to US$ 70 billion in financing 

• NGOs call for an immediate embargo of Russian coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel imports to the European Union
• EU currently imports more Russian gas than before the invasion of Ukraine
• French companies are the top European business partners of Russia’s state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom

• 92 NGOs and CSOs call on financial institutions to reject EU Taxonomy's greenwashing attempt by excluding gas and nuclear energy from their “sustainable” or “green” funds and bonds. 
• The war on Ukraine serves as a painful reminder that Western democracies need to eliminate their fossil fuel dependency to curb the influence of authoritarian regimes like Russia. 

• The German Government must put an embargo on energy imports from Russia
• German utilities still importing Russian hard coal and fossil gas
• German banks provided loans for Russian energy companies as late as December 2021

• Commercial banks channeled US$ 1.5 trillion to the coal industry since 2019.

• Financial institutions from the US, China, Japan, India, Canada and the UK are responsible for over 80% of coal financing and investment.